


The Devil May Care

by metisket



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Gen, dude you picked the wrong kid to victimize, love & concern, okay he did but don't tell gil, oz didn't start the fire, watch out she bites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metisket/pseuds/metisket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The embarrassing thing about this is that it’s not even about the Abyss. This man is just a random mugger, and Oz just wandered down the wrong alley at the wrong time. God, if he gets killed by a mugger, he’s really…<br/>He’s really going to die laughing, because how ridiculous is that?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil May Care

_How_ , Oz wonders, _do I get myself into these situations?_

The embarrassing thing about this one is that it’s not even about the Abyss. This man is just a random mugger, and Oz just wandered down the wrong alley at the wrong time. God, if he gets killed by a mugger, he’s really…

He’s really going to die laughing, because how ridiculous is that?

He should probably be upset, he definitely shouldn’t laugh. That’s the kind of behavior that irritates Alice and Elliot and scares Gil. It even creeps out Break, and once you’ve creeped out Break, you have truly arrived. But the thing is, the thing is…ah, he can’t help himself. If it’s funny, it’s funny.

The mugger jumped out from behind a trashcan and grabbed him. It was all horribly predictable, and also completely avoidable if Oz had been paying any attention to his surroundings. How embarrassing.

The mugger twisted Oz’s arms up behind him, which was painful, but he hadn’t had the forethought to bring any rope or wire. He’s trying to hold both arms in one hand and a gun to Oz’s head with the other. He’s got big hands, but his grip isn’t fabulous.

This is definitely no professional. Oz swallows a snicker.

Not that it takes a professional to kill a person; Oz could easily die here. Any mistake will tip everything over the edge. This is it, all or nothing, make or break.

He’ll never admit it to anyone, but he loves moments like this. He _loves_ this. He feels light and breathless, like laughing or screaming out the weird, suffocating joy of it all. The consequences are so dire they’re meaningless. He’s holding his own life in his hands, and part of him would really get a kick out of smashing it to bits _just because_.

God knows he’s good at destroying things.

“How much’d somebody pay to get a fancy boy like you back, eh?”

Ah, that douses his mood in ice water. Scratch mugger, the man’s officially been upgraded to kidnapper. _Here we go again_.

Again and again and again. As tired as Oz is of this, it amazes him that everyone else isn’t tired of it, too. Kidnapping, honestly, how passé. But exactly because it is passé, kidnapping has become a tiny bit funny, too. Far more bleak than the humor in mugging, of course.

How much would his family pay to have him back? His father would pay a fortune to have him shot. You have to laugh, and so Oz does, laughter scraping out of his throat like nails.

He enjoys the effect his laughter has on people at times like this.

“What’re you laughin’ at, kid? What th’ fuck’re you _laughin’_ at? You think this is a joke? Think it’s a game? I gotta a gun, you little bastard, you better take me seriously—”

“ _Seriously?_ ” Oz twists enough to look at the man sidelong. He doesn’t look like much. Ordinary. Maybe a little desperate.

One must tailor one’s approach to the situation. When dealing with a brave man, appeal to his mercy. When dealing with a coward, play up his fears. Basic social games.

“Of course I won’t take you seriously,” Oz says. “The worst thing you can do to me is kill me. Any monkey can kill; it isn’t impressive.” And death isn’t serious, it’s just inevitable. Not the same thing at all.

Oz smiles to think what Elliot would do if he could hear this train of thought. Now that would be scary.

The man’s hand tightens on Oz’s arms. “You think death’s the worst I can do to you!?”

This man? Yes. Oz laughs again.

“ _Stop laughing!_ ”

He does. Abruptly, between one breath and the next. The would-be kidnapper jumps a little.

“Your mistake,” Oz informs him, “was thinking that fancy clothes indicate value. They don’t.”

“What the _hell’re_ you _talkin’_ about, you little—”

“I’m saying I look nice, but I’m worth nothing. No one will pay for me. No one will come for me. You really will have to kill me in the end.” It’s very important to accept reality. “What a waste of time and effort, hmm?”

He listens to the harsh, panicked breathing behind him, as the kidnapper tries to decide whether or not he’s lying. Tries to decide what to do. Poor man, this isn’t going at all the way he’d hoped.

“My little sister might miss me,” Oz murmurs, almost to himself. “But that won’t matter to my father.”

“Yeah, but your ma won’t let you go like that. Mothers don’t—”

“My mother’s been dead for years.” Decades, in fact. How strange.

The kidnapper’s hand slips. He is a poor, unprofessional fool.

Oz spins away. The man raises his gun in startled reflex, and Oz shoves it violently away. Self-defense. It’s almost a habit by now; he’s been practicing.

He manages to get the gun pointed away from himself and toward the kidnapper, who panics. And when people panic, they often do the worst possible thing.

The kidnapper pulls the trigger. Oz is almost surprised to find the gun was loaded.

In the ringing silence after the gunshot, Oz studies the corpse and does not allow himself to laugh or throw up. What a sad, stupid man. Oz hopes…he hopes the man didn’t have children.

_This_ , he can almost hear Gil’s voice saying, _is why you shouldn’t handle guns until you know how use them_.

Oz realizes that he’s in an alley standing over a dead man. This is not the best position to find oneself in, so he runs. It ought to look like suicide, surely. That’s more or less what it was.

He slows down as he reaches the end of the alley, merges into foot traffic at a casual walk. He disappears, as far as anyone who might investigate the death of the man in the alley is concerned. It’s disturbingly easy.

“Oz!” Gil and Alice, charging toward him. They look so scared, he must’ve been missing for a while. He feels guilty as soon as he sees them. Because he knows he should take better care of himself for their sake. Because he enjoyed the attempted kidnapping more than he’s going to enjoy this conversation. Because Elliot’s right about him, and he’s every bit as twisted as Break says he is. And he knows it, but they don’t.

“Where the hell have you been!? What kind of worthless slave are you? Always wandering off on your own and doing stupid, stupid, _stupid_ —”

Alice slams into his chest and squeezes the air out of him, the rest of her diatribe muffled into the front of his shirt. He’s surprised all over again by how warm she is. He should get used to it, but he never does. She’s like a furnace, and whenever she touches him, it feels like she’s thawing him out. Somehow.

Oz smiles, buoyed on warmth, and pats Alice’s hair. But he doesn’t relax; he’s not sure yet how much trouble he’s in with Gil.

“Where were you?” Gil asks.

“I got lost?” Oz tries. It is worth a try. Gil won’t believe it, of course, but sometimes he’s willing to let things slide if he knows Oz doesn’t want to talk about them.

Alice thumps a fist into his chest, either for emphasis or because _she_ doesn’t believe it. Alice never lets anything slide. That’ll bruise.

“You have blood on your face,” Gil growls, making Oz feel more helpless than he ever has with a gun to his head.

“It’s not mine.”

Alice freezes and Gil’s eyes go wide. There is a very awkward silence.

“Is it human, or can I eat it?” asks the B-Rabbit.

“Sorry, Alice,” Oz says, still keeping a wary eye on Gil. “You can’t eat it.”

She starts complaining about this in a low mutter. She doesn’t understand why they think cannibalism is so wrong. The man’s already dead, isn’t he? It’s not like Alice is proposing to _kill_ him and eat him, so where’s the problem?

Oz doesn’t pay much attention. It’s disturbing, and anyway, Gil is scowling at him.

“How did you dispose of a body on your own?”

Gil just managed to make a fretful, Gil-esque statement about disposing of bodies, and oh God it’s hilarious and horrible all at once. Oz sometimes forgets what a long ten years it’s been for Gil. “I didn’t need to. I’d never seen him before. Why would anyone tie him to me?”

“What if someone hired him to go after you?”

“He didn’t seem to know who I was, not specifically. Just that I looked rich. And anyway,” Oz grins, “who’d believe a little kid like me could do anything against a big guy like that?”

Gil rolls his eyes. “Anyone who’s met you.”

Oz rolls his eyes back, which makes Gil sigh. Gil can make anything mundane, it’s a gift. And Alice can make anything ridiculous. If they’re around, Oz can hold on to what the world looks like, how it really feels. He can remember that everything is not the twisted game it appears when he spends too long inside his own head.

Gil steps forward and wipes a dead man’s blood off of Oz’s face with his gloves. His white gloves. It’s a lot easier to clean blood off of human skin than it is off of gloves. Oz sometimes worries about Gil’s long-term planning abilities.

Alice tips her head back and frowns while this is going on. “You wasted so much time killing that guy you won’t even let me eat that I’m _starving_. We’re going home.” She pulls away and marches off. Gil and Oz both pretend not to notice how often she looks back to check that they’re still behind her.

“You’re reckless,” Gilbert mutters quietly. “I can’t believe you. Did you even think to call for help? Why did you wander off, anyway? You can’t go on like this, Oz. Sooner or later…”

Yes. Sooner or later.

Something one absolutely does not say to Gil: _But it was fun_.

No. The sun is shining, Gil is fretting, Alice is complaining, and everything is exactly as it should be. Oz isn’t even allowed to _think_ too loudly that it was fun. He’s with family now. It’s time to pretend to be normal.  
 

**Author's Note:**

> First posted September 2010.


End file.
